Hi, Colonel,
It is true that there is plenty of room for improvement in the HPS system, and your complaints are not invalid. But here is a quote from the book "Plowshares into Swords."
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">At the time Gorgas made his report to the Secretary of War for 1863 (on November 15) he remarked that "the army is now adequately supplied on this side of the Mississippi River with artillery quite equal to thet possessed by the enemy." His bureau had placed 677 guns in the field since the first of October, 1862, with an appropriate amount of ammunition.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Earlier it says 113 guns had been fabricated within the Confederacy between September 30, 1862 and September 30, 1863, while 239 had been purchased.
While this covers a period a little later than the one in which you are fighting, it is reasonable to believe that prior to that time artillery was being bought and manufactured, not to mention captured.
It is true that the Yankees had better logistics, which is reflected in higher levels of ammunition per gun/man in almost every scenario.
But while logistics was good, it wasn't miraculous. There are many instances of temporary shortages in Union armies because of outrunning their supply lines. The reason Grant's campaign did not go overland against Vicksburg was that when he tried it, Rebel cavalry destroyed his supply depot at Holly Springs and his rail line from Tennessee. In any case, guns didn't magically appear right after they were captured or destroyed. They had to be shipped from somewhere. I would think an army falling back on its depot would have a better chance of resupply than an army advancing away from its depot, even if the former was a Rebel army and the latter a Union one.
As to wounded officers, the wounds varied from very minor to permanently incapacitating. I'm sure HPS fudged and made the wound incapacitating for the duration of the campaign, which sounds pretty reasonable to me. In the case of General Corse, Sherman is reported to have said when he saw the actual injury, which was very minor, "They came damn near to missing you, didn't they, Corse?"
Anyway, so much in an HPS campaign depends on so many factors that are outside the scope of the game that you can't blame them for generalizing. We'll never know what the actual effect of your success would have been because historically it didn't happen. I think all the HPS campaign games have to interpolate historical events due to the what-if nature of the campaign system, but Corinth most of all.
MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA
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